Health Informatics

Flyer   Transcript and video clips

Topic: Your Health Record: Quality of Care or Privacy of Information?

Time: Tuesday 14 August 2007, 5:30 to 7:30 pm

Venue: Laby Theatre, The University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus

A free public forum.

Health informatics has the power to revolutionise health care. If a patient’s health record were on hand wherever that person was – at the GP, with the specialist, or in the emergency ward – communication about care would be streamlined. If the outbreak and progress of infectious diseases were automatically monitored and disseminated, the benefits for community health could be profound. If all of the clinical case information about the impact of treatment regimes were linked together for data analysis, it might transform health research. It’s a wonderful vision. But can we achieve it, technically and organisationally? At a cost we can afford? Without compromising the rights of the individual?

 

A hypothetical was posed by Professor Graham Brown, the Foundation Director of the Nossal Institute for Global Health. He has served as Head of Division of Infection and Immunity at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research and as Head of the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Eminent panellists from across Australia, representing the perspectives of health services consumers, the law, government agencies and the IT industry, joined Graham in vigorous discussion about:

• What is possible in health records and what is desirable for quality of care?
• How do we deal with the privacy and ethical issues of what is possible?

 

Panellists

Roger Clarke

Roger is a consultant specialising in strategic and policy aspects of eBusiness, information infrastructure, and data surveillance and privacy. He has been in what we now call the information technology industry for 35 years. He interprets technology so as to make its relevance, opportunities and impacts accessible to executives and managers, and he provides expert evidence in a variety of areas. He works out of Canberra, Australia, through his own company, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, and through a small number of strategic alliances.

He has been back in full-time consultancy for the last decade after spending 1984-1995 as a senior Information Systems academic at the Australian National University. Prior to that he spent 17 years in the I.T. industry in Sydney, London and Zürich. He holds Visiting Professorships at the University of Hong Kong (in eCommerce), at the University of N.S.W. (in Cyberspace Law & Policy), and at the A.N.U. (in Computer Science).

He is a prolific author and public speaker. He provides a very substantial library of community service pages on his website, which attracts 3 million hits p.a. Many of the works are available under open content copyright licences. He is also a longstanding public interest advocate, particularly in relation to information privacy.

 

Richard Eccles

Richard is currently a First Assistant Secretary in the Australian Department of Health and Ageing.  He has a Masters degree in political literature from the University of New South Wales. 

Richard manages the Primary and Ambulatory Care Division, which covers all aspects of the policy and funding of primary care services.  Areas within the Division include primary care financing; primary care models of service delivery; the electronic health (eHealth) work program; responsibility for quality and safety issues; health service access; rural and remote health services; and the establishment of Australia’s National Health Call Centre Network.

Richard has over seventeen years of experience in the government and non-government sector – for several years he was CEO of the Rural Health Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation committed to helping health workers in remote areas of Australia have access to best practice information – delivered via a satellite network.

In positions within the government sector, Richard has looked after functions including international health, rural health, inter-governmental relations, health financing and working to harmonise the regulation of therapeutic products in Australia and New Zealand.

 

Heather Leslie

Heather worked in General Practice for many years before changing her focus to health informatics – the use of IT and computers in health care.  She has participated in high-level health IT strategy development, as well as taking a hands-on role in creating software applications for use by primary care clinicians and consumers. She has been a pioneer in Personal Health Record development in Australia, designing and implementing HotHealth and Betterdiabetes.com – both supporting consumers to take a more active role in their health care.

She is currently Director of Clinical Modelling for Ocean Informatics, an Australian company specialising in semantic interoperability and shared electronic health record solutions.

 

Cath Roper

Cath Roper is a Consumer Academic at the Centre for Psychiatric Nursing Research and Practice.  She teaches a consumer perspective subject in the post graduate mental health nursing course at the University of Melbourne. Cath had multiple involuntary admissions to public mental health services over a thirteen year period and uses this perspective in her teaching.  Cath also worked four years as a Consumer Consultant in Mental Health Services.  She is a consumer surveyor for the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards. 

 

Loane Skene

Loane Skene is a Professor of Law in the Faculty of Law, specialising in Health and Medical Law. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Law in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. She has been at the University of Melbourne since 1992 after working as a solicitor in Melbourne and England; and a policy adviser in Canada and Melbourne (10 years with the Victorian Law Reform Commission). She is the author of two books on law and medical practice and has published numerous chapters in book and articles in Australian and overseas legal, medical and scientific journals.

 

Beth Wilson

On 1 May 1997 Beth Wilson became Victoria’s Health Services Commissioner.  She is a lawyer by training, rather than by inclination, and has worked mainly in administrative law.  Beth has had a long-standing interest in medico/legal and ethical issues.

The Health Services Commissioner receives and resolves complaints about health service providers with a view to improving the quality of health services for everybody.  Prior to becoming Health Services Commissioner, Beth was the President of the Mental Health Review Board, a Senior Legal Member of the Social Security Appeals Board and the WorkCare Appeals Board.

Beth regularly conducts seminars, lectures and classes for consumers, health service providers and others.  She is a past President of the Victorian Branch of ANZAPPL (the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law).

In October 2002, Beth was awarded Monash University’s Distinguished Alumni Award for her outstanding professional achievements and inspirational leadership.  In April 2003, Beth was awarded the Centenary Medal for her services to health, and in May 2004 Beth was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from RMIT for her contributions to health education.